Disasters In Urban Areas Research Articles

Application of BIM+GIS Integration Technology in the Construction of Urban Intelligent Water Informatization

Urban intelligent water informatization is the process of managing and operating urban water systems with the use of contemporary information and communication technology in order to increase productivity, security, and sustainability. Establishing the appropriate infrastructure is the initial stage in building an intelligent water system so that management can choose wisely how to manage and operate the water system. Building information modeling (BIM) is a digital depiction of a building's or infrastructure's structural and functional details. In most metropolitan regions, a fast development phase is predicted to cause several water issues, including water resource shortages, floods, poor drainage, and water resource contamination. As a result, a practical approach is required for urban intelligent water information technology with the help of artificial intelligence techniques. Intelligent water systems may be built using Building Information Modeling (BIM) software to increase the system's effectiveness, stability, and durability. By offering a potent tool for storing and analyzing geographical data connected to the water distribution system, a geographic information system (GIS) can play a crucial role in the development of urban intelligent water informatization using ArcGIS mapping Software. The Internet of Things (IoT) system is used to implement intelligent water informatization, hardware implementation using ESP32, and software development using MQTT Broker and Node-Red. As a result, we recommended utilizing BIM+GIS integration technology for building urban intelligent water informatization. The suggested system is evaluated using management efficiency, urban flood control, innovative Construction, intensive management, and computation cost. In this research, the main objective is to identify where there are water leaks broken pipes and early warning system and monitoring system for flash flood disasters in urban areas. The result findings show that the integration of BIM and GIS provides a comprehensive platform for managing complex water informatization infrastructure projects and maximizes efficiency and sustainability.

Research and design of urban flood control and drainage dispatching system

In order to solve the problem of frequent flood disasters in urban areas, water conservancy models such as hydrological forecast, flood simulation and operation decision-making were studied and constructed for the waterway-region-urban flood control and drainage engineering facilities, and urban flood control and drainage operation system was designed with the model as the core. The overall structure of the system is "five horizontal and two vertical". The "five horizontal" bottom up are respectively the intelligent perception layer, cloud infrastructure layer, data layer, service layer and application layer, and the "two vertical" are respectively the security system and the standard specification system. On this basis, the function customization of the system is completed to achieve comprehensive display, early warning and forecast, flood simulation, risk assessment, project scheduling and intelligent decision-making functions.

Building green infrastructure for mitigating urban flood risk in Beijing, China

Due to climate change and accelerated urbanization, urban flooding has an increasing impact on the sustainable development of metropolitan areas. Since the 1990s, green infrastructure has developed as an alternative and sustainable approach to the mitigation of flood disaster in urban areas. To improve the resilience of urban ecological flood control and build a green infrastructure network, we provide quantitative measures of flood risk assessment to generate a grid-scale (1 ×1 km) flood risk assessment results and analyze its spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Then, we propose a GIS-based multi-criteria assessment method to determine the priority areas of green infrastructure according to four criteria, generating a distribution map of green infrastructure priorities in Beijing at the township scale. From the perspective of urban flood risk mitigation, the research proposes a new method to determine the priority areas of green infrastructure, thus establishing suggestions for future green infrastructure construction in Beijing.

Pros and cons of commercial agreements with dark stores to support early response to an earthquake disaster in urban areas of developing countries

Relief goods required by victims of an earthquake are usually shipped from facilities outside of the affected areas, however, several factors could delay their delivery. In this paper, we propose strengthening a short-distance distribution network by means of dark store's warehouses. This measure allows additional time to mobilize extra resources and carry out more complex and better-structured relief tasks. We analyze the potential pros and cons of a commercial agreement with a dark store, for ensuring fast additional delivery of relief goods during the first hours of an emergency, in the case of shortage of pre-positioned relief goods.

Using Group Decision-Making to assess the negative environmental, social and economic impacts of unstable rock salt mines in Maceio, Brazil

The disaster caused by the instability of rock salt mines in Maceió, Brazil, is the largest ongoing worldwide socio-environmental disaster in urban areas and has already affected approximately 60,000 families directly who needed to be relocated. To assess the negative impacts caused by this disaster, a Group Decision-Making (GDM) model was developed based on qualitative (Thematic Content Analysis) and quantitative (Nominal Group Technique) analysis. A comparative evaluation of the opinion of three groups of stakeholders was performed: two considered as experts, i.e., academic professors and local public agents, and a group of citizens directly affected by the disaster. As a result, the residents considered the relevance of the impacts in the three dimensions analyzed to be similar, while the experts gave greater importance to the social and economic dimensions than the environmental one. This study potentially contributes to society by guiding public policymakers in the decision-making process on mitigation and preventive actions, and academics interested in the governance of disasters caused by mining industries.

Urbanismo de riesgo, el principio de los desastres urbanos y su prevención con sistemas geoinformáticos, CDMX, México

The so-called urbanism of risk created the conditions for the inadequate urban planning in Mexico City (CDMX), which affects the populations established there. This term is little known today and should not be confused with urban risk. Nowadays, the incorrect urban configuration creates awareness in the inhabitants about the risks present in their lives, according to the impact of natural phenomena (hazards). It is important to understand that the effects of disasters in urban areas are derived from growth in places with unsuitable characteristics, due to the irregularity of the terrain. Risk is the result between hazard and vulnerability, which becomes urban risk when it affects the established population. The contribution of this article shows that the beginning of the adequate urban configuration based on geoinformatics systems will prevent risk urbanism in areas where there is no city growth yet. As a result, it is shown the crossing of variables provided by governmental institutions and real events occurred, according to floods, landslides, earthquakes and collapse of mined areas, using geoinformatics systems to show the municipalities with greater affectation, according to the existing urban risk, which can be replicated and attended in other parts of the country and the world, based on the management between government, academics and population, with the objective of preventing the creation of risk urbanism.

A study on dynamic simulation and improvement strategies of flood resilience for urban road system

As one of the most important and directly affected infrastructure by flood disasters in urban areas, the road system plays a crucial role in maintaining the order of human production and life, as well as providing a foundation for the implementation of emergency response work in disaster scenarios. The existing flood resilience quantification methods based on maximum inundation depths of each individual road unit neglects the influences on flood resilience caused by the connectivity of road system. Therefore, this paper focuses on the road system, simulates the flood resilience of the road system in multiple disaster scenarios based on the functionality curve of road system under rainfall-inundation processes, then quantifies the improvement effect of Low Impact Development (LID) measures on flood resilience. A case study is conducted in Yunmen community, Jingdezhen city in China. The results indicate that: (1) The flood resilience of the road system decreases with the increase of rainfall intensity under different scenarios, and the magnitude of the decrease reduces. (2) The road system exhibits strong adaptability during the early stages of rainfall; The duration of functionality loss increases with increasing of rainfall intensity in different scenarios. (3) Implementation of LID measures can significantly improve system robustness by enhancing the reliability of the roads around critical nodes, thereby effectively enhancing flood resilience. The conclusions can provide a theoretical basis for decision-makers to develop urban flood mitigation engineering plans and resilience strategies tailored to local conditions.

A Theoretical Nonlinear Regression Model of Rainfall Surface Flow Accumulation and Basin Features in Park-Scale Urban Green Spaces Based on LiDAR Data

Green infrastructure is imperative for efficiently mitigating flood disasters in urban areas. However, inadequate green space planning under rapid urbanization is a critical issue faced by most Chinese cities. Aimed at theoretically understanding the rainwater storage capacity and improvement potential of urban green spaces, a synthetic simulation model was developed to quantify rainfall surface flow accumulation (FA) based on the morphological factors of a flow basin: the area, circumference, maximum basin length, and stream length sum. This model consisted of applying the Urban Forest Effects-Hydrology model (UFORE-Hydro) to simulate the actual precipitation-to-surface runoff ratio through a procedure involving canopy interception, soil infiltration, and evaporation; additionally, a relatively accurate multiple flow direction-maximum downslope (MFD-md) algorithm was applied to distribute the surface flow in a highly realistic manner, and a self-built “extraction algorithm” extracted the surface runoff corresponding to each studied basin alongside four fundamental morphological parameters. The various nonlinear regression functions were assessed from both univariable and multivariable perspectives. We determined that the Gompertz function was optimal for predicting the theoretical quantification of surface FA according to the morphological features of any given basin. This article provides parametric vertical design guidance for improving the rainwater storage capacities of urban green spaces.

Improved 3D Shallow‐Deep Vs Structure in Tongzhou, Beijing (China), Revealed by Dense Array Ambient Noise Tomography

AbstractShear‐wave velocity (Vs) structures can reveal the shallow sediment thickness and deep tectonic features of buried faults and geological units. They are important for reducing seismic and geological disasters in urban areas. Based on ambient noise data from the Tongzhou dense array (919 seismographic stations), we obtain a fine shallow‐deep (0–5 km) 3D Vs model, by jointly inverting the phase‐velocity dispersions of Rayleigh waves, including short‐period (0.3–2 s) multimode dispersions using the frequency‐Bessel transform method and the long‐period (2–6 s) fundamental‐mode dispersions using the fast marching method. Our results show that the Vs inhomogeneities agree well with the distribution of geological units. We use the 1 km/s isodepth of Vs as the reference thickness of quaternary sediments. Fengbo sag (FBS) and Dachang sag (DCS), which mainly show low velocity and density, have thick sediment thicknesses (approximately 550–600 and 320–420 m, respectively). The NE high‐velocity belt in Daxing high (DXH) has a thinner sediment thickness (∼230 m). Thus, FBS and DCS have a greater risk of earthquake hazards owing to the strong amplification effects of ground motion. Additionally, Vs distribution in the FBS, DCS, DXH, and Yanshan Fold Belt are spatially related to the medium density and buried faults (Nanyuan‐Tongxian, Daxing, and Xiadian faults). We infer that the Vs structures are associated with the controlling effects of these large normal faults and inhomogeneous strata density. The discontinuity of the NE high‐velocity belt in DXH probably results from the intense tectonic activity of Nankou‐Sunhe fault.

Determination of disaster scenarios for estimating relief demand to develop an early response to an earthquake disaster in urban areas of developing countries

After an earthquake strikes, information about relief demand and victims’ location is needed to prepare and perform an effective response as soon as possible. However, available and reliable information is extremely limited before the disaster strikes, even in the early moments. In urban areas, the formulation and analysis of disaster scenarios allow to estimate the potential relief demand and the magnitude and characteristics of the immediate response efforts. We propose a five steps procedure to generate and analyze earthquake disaster scenarios in urban areas at block level, which allows to estimate the quantity and location of the relief demand for each scenario and to plan an immediate response. The paper focuses on steps 2 and 3. The procedure generates sets of scenarios from Atlas of Natural Hazards and Risk (ANHR) and/or historical data of previous earthquakes (step 2), and estimates their initial relief demand (step 3). Once the demand is known (location and amount), the procedure allows prepositioning the aid closer to the victims considering small-size facilities and small quantities of relief goods. The procedure is useful for cities with few information and resources, as the cities in developing countries. The procedure is applied to two areas in Mexico City, generating scenarios based on an ANHR and information of the 2017 Mexico City Earthquake. For each scenario, the relief demand is estimated. Then, for each study area, the facilities location and the delivery paths are determined, as preparation to develop an early response in case of a future earthquake.

Linking Flood Risk Mitigation and Food Security: An Analysis of Land-Use Change in the Metropolitan Area of Rome

Land consumption and climate change have intensified natural disasters in urban areas. In response to these emergencies under the European 2030 Agenda, Sustainable Development Goals have been established to improve ecosystem protection and increase resilience and adaptation to natural disasters globally (Goal 13 “Climate action” and Goal 15 “Life on land”). In order to implement governance tools appropriately, it is necessary to know the relationships among the drivers, the changes in the state of urban ecosystems and agro-ecosystems, and the impact on the supply of goods and services at spatial and temporal scales. In this paper, Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes (LULCCs) in the metropolitan area of Rome have been investigated, with the purpose of detecting the synergistic variations in the supply of the flood mitigation and agricultural production ecosystem services (ES). The methodology is based on a GIS (Geographic Information System) analysis that identifies the transformation processes and permanencies related to land-cover. The variation in flood mitigation services was quantified through the use of the Urban Flood Risk Mitigation Model (UFRM) from the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) suite, while the variation in agricultural production through productivity coefficients was associated with changes in land-uses. Finally, an analysis of LULC-induced synergies and trade-offs between the two services was performed. The results show a net negative change in ES supply, caused mainly by urbanization at the expense of agricultural land. This decrease in ES supply is not offset by other LULCC transitions. In addition, the analysis of synergies and trade-offs between flood mitigation ES and agricultural production ES (in arable land, orchards, vineyards, and olive groves) shows that the reduction of agricultural land negatively affects both ES. The innovative contribution of this paper lies in setting an integrated methodology that is able to investigate how LULCC influences both hydraulic safety and food security. Findings can be useful to support planning of enhancing the role of agriculture in metropolitan areas.

Complex disaster response framework to reduce urban disaster vulnerability.

Cities are vulnerable to a range of disasters that can occur simultaneously due to their complexity. Therefore, an effective disaster response plan is needed to reduce the disaster vulnerability of cities. In particular, evacuation route management is important for reducing the losses from a disaster. Efficient disaster response can be realized by searching for suitable evacuation routes and effective road network management. In this paper, we propose a disaster response framework based on a multilayered road network structure and evacuation routes based on our road network. The suggested road structure consists of three layers for the effective management of the network. An A* algorithm-based search for multiple evacuation routes under different conditions in response to an individual disaster on the configured road map provides a safe route for evacuees. As a result, the damage caused by disasters in urban areas can be ameliorated.

Can Disaster Risk Education Reduce the Impact of Disasters in Schools?

One of the largest cities in Indonesia is Semarang City. This city has a very high level of disaster proneness. The following are disasters that often occur in the city of Semarang, including floods, tidal waves, landslides, and droughts. The impact of repeated disasters on urban communities is damage and loss of life. However, currently disaster risk education introduces risk mitigation and disaster preparedness in minimizing the impact of disasters in urban areas. Disaster risk reduction has been included in the school curriculum. The purpose of writing this article is to examine the role of schools in disaster mitigation, disaster curriculum in schools. Empowering school-age children to understand disaster mitigation is the first step in building a disaster-aware community. So that when a disaster occurs, people no longer experience confusion and panic, because they have understood how to reduce disaster risk. School-age children are expected to be able to bring the knowledge they have learned from school and become "agents" who can build a culture of disaster awareness in their environment, so that a resilient society can be realized in dealing with disasters.

Analysis of the correlation urban systems and risk management floods, study case: Kaliwungu, Kendal Regency

Flood disasters in urban areas have become a frequent occurrence, especially in cities with high activities. The climate change phenomenon marked by increased rainfall also triggers the risk of flooding in urban areas. The flood disaster also occurred in the Kaliwungu District, which is one of the urban areas in the Kendal Regency, Central Java Province. The causes of flooding in urban areas is the failure of the drainage system to accommodate flood overflows. System failure in urban areas can affect the functioning of all systems in urban areas. This is supported by the high complexity of the urban system that influences each other, there are physical, social, and economic components of the community. There are two main questions in this research, namely “What forms the relationship between urban systems and disaster risk management?” and “How are urban systems and disaster risk management related to reducing flood disasters? So the aim this research is achieved of this study is to examine the relationship between urban systems and disaster risk management in an effort to reduce flood disasters. This research uses a descriptive case study method, which is based on qualitative material from various sources, including scientific articles, observation of the study site, and in-depth interviews. This study seeks to reveal the relationship between urban systems and flood risk management. The thing that links between urban systems and flood risk management is the main role of urban system functions in efforts to reduce flood disasters through comprehensive and complex disaster risk management. Thus, the urban system and disaster risk management must be interrelated in the preparation of urban spatial plans.

Weathering the Storm: Community Socio-Economic and Physical Vulnerability Assessment of Informal Settlements to Disasters in Arusha City, Tanzania

Urban population growth has demonstrated a synergetic relationship with the growth of informal settlements and vulnerability to disasters in urban areas. This study employed Community Participatory Vulnerability Assessment (CPVA) to analyse vulnerability in informal settlements in Arusha City, Tanzania. The results show that a plethora of factors, including socio-economic and physical realities interact in complex non-linear ways to shape vulnerability to disasters in informal settlements in the city. The study shows that coping strategies of some individuals in informal settlements reinforce their risks to disasters. This is particularly demonstrated by the stones that are positioned on weak roof structures for protection, and which may potentially serve as projectiles in the event of storm. This quick-fix coping strategy, which results from short-sighted narrow conception of human relationship to the natural environment, may appear sustainable in the short-term. However, given the rising uncertainties of the future, it is unlikely to be sustainable. The study concludes that indigenous knowledge holds great potential in community responses to long term considerations regarding environmental hazards. The study also recommends that measures and strategies aimed at reducing disasters should address the whole set of issues leading to poverty and exposure disparities within the community.
 Keywords: Assessment; vulnerability, disaster, informal settlements, Tanzania.

Analysis of the Relationship between Vulnerable Social Groups and Civil Defense Training Facilities to Improve Crisis Management Responsiveness

This paper aims to minimize damage and protect people through efficient response in the event of a disaster in urban areas, focusing on civil defense training facilities with an urban disaster prevention function and on vulnerable social groups, who can suffer more damage in the event of disaster. The influential factors in the relationship between civil defense training facilities and the vulnerable social group were verified by multiple regression. As a result, a significant influence relationship was found targeting the group with physically vulnerable characteristics such as the elderly, disabled, and children. Therefore, it is necessary to expand defense training facilities by region, giving priority to the physically vulnerable group in order to minimize disaster damage and facilitate appropriate crisis management.

쇠퇴지역 도시회복력 평가지표 도출을 위한 기초 연구 : 정책 네트워크 분석 및 Fuzzy 다기준 의사결정법의 활용

With the increase in disasters and damage caused by climate change, the global population and infrastructure are gradually being concentrated in urban areas as a result of rapid urbanization, and concerns for disasters in urban areas are increasing. Vulnerability to and risks of disasters are particularly serious issues in declining areas with poor physical and social environment. The improvement of urban resilience is necessary to prevent disasters in these areas, and an index for evaluating the current resilience level in these areas is necessary. To determine the suitability of evaluation index application for disaster resilience in declining areas, this study generated a list of 24 evaluation indices by reviewing published studies on this topic and examined the applicability of these indices in a survey conducted with 30 experts. The independence of each index was assessed through policy network analysis. In addition, the relevance and applicability of the indices were determined, and their effectiveness was assessed using the fuzzy multiple-criteria decision making method. Lastly, the priorities of the evaluation indices were suggested by combining the two analysis methods mentioned above. The results of this study will likely contribute to the development of an evaluation index for effective evaluation of urban resilience in declining areas.

Emergency restoration method of integrated energy system in coordination with upper and lower control

The frequent occurrence of extreme meteorological disasters in urban areas during winter poses great impacts on the secure operation of regional energy infrastructures, leading to cascading failures and load losses in integrated energy systems (IESs). To enhance IES’s capacity to cope with extremely cold disasters, we analyze emergency response strategies in the post-disaster period and establish a top–down and bottom–up restoration model. For the top–down strategy, automatic control of the unit and network topology and human resource deployments are considered. For the bottom–up strategy, the energy consumption patterns are adjusted by the users. Post-disaster restoration greatly improves the working performance of the IES in the event of weather disasters by leveraging these two types of strategies and the complementary characteristic between heat and electrical energy. The entire post-disaster recovery process is modeled as a mixed-whole linear program, which can be solved quickly offline. It is tested on an IES with 9 electrical nodes and 32 heat nodes. The results demonstrate that the proposed model is effective and efficient.

Flood Disaster and the Vulnerability of Households to Crime in Urban Areas in Nigeria

This study explores whether natural disasters, especially flooding, would lead to a rise in violent and property crime rates, and the implications that these crimes could have on the victims. A total of 100 victims of flood induced crime in flood prone areas were selected using purposive sampling technique. The data collected using questionnaire, and records from security agency comprised of socio-economic characteristics of affected households, violent and property crime rate rise, and implications of flood induced crime as perceived by affected communities. Also reported cases of crime in affected areas were collected from Police divisional headquarters and State Police Command of flood affected areas. Data collected were analysed using percentages, frequency count. Likert scale method was used to measure increase in crime during the flood incidence in the affected areas. Using a ‘before, during and after’ approach, the study revealed that flood disaster increased the vulnerability level of households to crime and at the same time crime increased during flood disaster and decreased significantly after the disaster in urban areas in Nigeria. Also, the implication of flood induced crime include anxiety and depression (ADI=2.73), Social dysfunction (SDI=2.36) and loss of confidence (LCI=2.72). Therefore, there is need for disaster prone areas and disaster management agents in the country to incorporate security measures in disaster preparedness, coping and recovery strategies in order to minimize security challenges ensuing from natural disaster in the country during flooding

Potential of GPM IMERG Precipitation Estimates to Monitor Natural Disaster Triggers in Urban Areas: The Case of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Extreme rainfall can be a catastrophic trigger for natural disaster events at urban scales. However, there remains large uncertainties as to how satellite precipitation can identify these triggers at a city scale. The objective of this study is to evaluate the potential of satellite-based rainfall estimates to monitor natural disaster triggers in urban areas. Rainfall estimates from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission are evaluated over the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where urban floods and landslides occur periodically as a result of extreme rainfall events. Two rainfall products derived from the Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), the IMERG Early and IMERG Final products, are integrated into the Noah Multi-Parameterization (Noah-MP) land surface model in order to simulate the spatial and temporal dynamics of two key hydrometeorological disaster triggers across the city over the wet seasons during 2001–2019. Here, total runoff (TR) and rootzone soil moisture (RZSM) are considered as flood and landslide triggers, respectively. Ground-based observations at 33 pluviometric stations are interpolated, and the resulting rainfall fields are used in an in-situ precipitation-based simulation, considered as the reference for evaluating the IMERG-driven simulations. The evaluation is performed during the wet seasons (November-April), when average rainfall over the city is 4.4 mm/day. Results show that IMERG products show low spatial variability at the city scale, generally overestimate rainfall rates by 12–35%, and impacts on TR and RZSM vary spatially mostly as a function of land cover and soil types. Results based on statistical and categorical metrics show that IMERG skill in detecting extreme events is moderate, with IMERG Final performing slightly better for most metrics. By analyzing two recent storms, we observe that IMERG detects mostly hourly extreme events, but underestimates rainfall rates, resulting in underestimated TR and RZSM. An evaluation of normalized time series using percentiles shows that both satellite products have significantly improved skill in detecting extreme events when compared to the evaluation using absolute values, indicating that IMERG precipitation could be potentially used as a predictor for natural disasters in urban areas.